The European Environment Agency (EEA) released today its fourth Environment State and Outlook report — SOER 2010 — a comprehensive assessment of how and why Europe’s environment is changing, and what we are doing about it. SOER 2010 concludes that a fully integrated approach to transforming Europe to a resource-efficient green economy can not only result in a healthy environment, but also boost prosperity and social cohesion.

Emissions of air pollutants derive from almost all economic and societal activities. They result
in clear risks to human health and ecosystems. In Europe, policies and actions at all levels have
greatly reduced anthropogenic emissions and exposure but some air pollutants still harm human
health. Similarly, as emissions of acidifying pollutants have reduced, the situation for Europe's rivers
and lakes has improved but atmospheric nitrogen oversupply still threatens biodiversity in sensitive
terrestrial and water ecosystems. The movement of atmospheric pollution between continents
attracts increasing political attention. Greater international cooperation, also focusing on links
between climate and air pollution policies, is required more than ever to address air pollution.

Cities can be considered as 'ecosystems', albeit with a high technical component. Their urban metabolism is an open and dynamic system, which consumes, transforms and releases materials and energy, develops and adapts to changes, and interacts with humans and other ecosystems. Therefore they should be analysed and managed as other ecosystems.

Biodiversity and the ecosystem services upon which we all depend are inextricably linked. Both are under pressure from humanity's ever-increasing use of natural resources. Europe's high resource consumption results in an ecological footprint that impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services on the continent and elsewhere in the world.

A temperature rise of 2 °C or more above pre-industrial levels is likely to cause major societal, economic and environmental disruption, making it challenging for human and natural systems to adapt at affordable costs. Climate change will affect the vulnerability of European society to an array of threats to human health, almost all economic sectors, ecosystem goods and services and biodiversity.

Europe's freshwaters are affected by water scarcity, droughts, floods and physical modifications. Many water bodies are at risk of failing to meet the aim of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) to achieve good status by 2015. Future policies should encourage demand management through actions such as increasing water efficiency. In addition, water management will benefit from applying an ecosystems perspective, using floodplains and groundwater aquifers for storing water, and making room (space) for rivers.

Biodiversity — the variety of ecosystems, species and genes — is essential to human wellbeing,
delivering services that sustain our economies and societies. Its huge importance makes
biodiversity loss all the more troubling. European species are threatened with extinction and
overexploitation. Natural habitats continue to be lost and fragmented, and degraded by pollution
and climate change. Despite actions taken and progress made, these threats continue to impact
biodiversity in Europe. The new global and EU targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2020
are ambitious but achieving them will require better policy implementation, coordination across
sectors, ecosystem management approaches and a wider understanding of biodiversity's value.